


Ice

by TheVeryLastValkyrie



Series: And They Fell Like Dominoes [9]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 14:23:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4063231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeryLastValkyrie/pseuds/TheVeryLastValkyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of a filthy rich boy and a clever dick girl at one of the world's most prestigious universities; of cheap wine and red plush; of betrayal, and bad blood, and her reading glasses. This time, she finds him extraordinary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Migrated from my Tumblr. Here be F words, and a lot of other words besides.

The strains of _O Come All Ye Faithful_ lilt, swell, rise up on spirals of warm air from the vent. It’s nearly Christmas, when everything in London smells like cinnamon-scented payday loans and wonder. The woman is wearing a red woollen hat over her smooth dark hair, and that’s wrong: her hair curls, should curl…Thomas grasps that Annie is Annie, that Annie’s hair is smooth and ordinary these days, that he’s on his back on the floor and Annie’s knee is on his chest in the same moment. There are small gold knots in her small neat ears, and they would make her genteel if anything ever could.

“Tom.” Her smile is broad and beautiful, but it’s not Annie’s smile. Annie keeps her mouth shut when she smiles. “It’s been a while.”

“Annabelle.” She doesn’t like that, the call of the wild, reminding her half of who she is. She applies just enough pressure to his sternum to make it creak; he doesn’t like that. “Been chatting to my brother, have you?”

She has a red jacket on too, a glossy waterproof, and boots which cost more than money, which cost a word in the ear of the right sales assistant with access to the right list. Annie is quite frightening, and she peels red lips back from white teeth and says, “Still all about Ollie, are we? Still obsessed with big brother – who _is_ watching you, by the way.” Whatever she gave him isn’t wearing off in a hurry. When he breathes in, a little of her shadow seeps into him, outlining her blacker against the white surfaces the designer he paid a packet for used to furnish the apartment.

“Still in love with Ollie, are we?”

“Uh-uh- _uh_.” Teasingly, she shakes his head from side-to-side. Not teasingly, she grips a hank of hair, lifts it up, lets it drop, lets it bounce on the tile. Her face only gets whiter when he shrieks. “You’re sick, you know that? You’re worse than sick, actually: you’re predictable. You only managed to last as long as you did because the thought of me gritting my teeth and wishing myself away with your brother kept you hard. Nuh-uh- _uh_.” This time, she slaps him, ever so casually, across the cheek. “Ollie holds back. Ollie makes you wait. Ollie makes you want it until you’re begging for it, and _then_ he fucks you blind, and when you consider your brother is a foul-tempered prick with trust issues, that verges on extraordinary.” She’d like to make both their heads bounce before they rolled, make both of them go bye-bye, gone from her for good. “I didn’t think about Ollie for a _single_ second,” Annie says, sounding like ice, and Thomas wonders who and what got her hair glossy and ordinary. “You took _nothing_ from me.”

It’s then that he sees the red handle, the Swiss army knife. _We Three Kings_ drifts in, conspiring with her to make whatever happens next is as inaudible as possible.

“Did I mention the police are on their way to arrest you for possession with intent? There’s a lot of blow under your bed.” The corkscrew looks like her hair used to, and a red spot of blood wells from her thumb when she tests the point. The tears only now beginning in his eyes both disgust and amuse her. She’ll slide back into herself after this, into her own pelt, back to business and the house in Belgravia with the black and white tiled porch. She only thinks about Ollie – not that she ever thinks about Ollie, about the precious twist of skin and sarcasm to his lip – because although she lives like an empress among queens, they might’ve ruled the world.

“Shame about the traffic.” And Annie smiles her not Annie smile. “We’re going to be alone for a bit.”

Thomas starts screaming right on cue.


End file.
